Sunday, March 6, 2011

My First "Wedding" Cake

The reason for the " " is because the cake is not actually for a wedding. It is for a marriage enrichment program culminating in a renewal of vows. It is, in fact, not just for one couple but for 40.

I was given just a week to think about how to go about doing this cake. I've never done a wedding cake before so the apprehension was definitely there. When I was given a rather small budget, my first thought was it was enough to make a decent two-tiered cake. Clearly, I was so clueless as to how much wedding cakes cost! When I saw this and this, I knew my cake was going to be a huge bargain.

But as my son aptly put it, even if I wasn't going to get paid for this, I'd still give it my all. True. So here it is...just finished it early this morning...my first ever two-tiered wedding cake!

The top tier is an 8" chocolate chiffon and the bottom tier is an 11" mocha chiffon. The cakes are filled and frosted with Magnolia Bakery's creamy vanilla frosting. All the decorations were made from gumpaste.

I got the idea of the bride and groom topper from a Carol Deacon book. I borrowed the book from the library months ago and photocopied some of the pages that I thought might come in handy for me in the future. I really had a blast making this topper!

So that's it for another new thing for me. Would I want to do this again? Certainly! The experience caused me a bit of anxiety but it was all worth it in the end.

You all know that I am just a self-taught homebaker, right? I've never attended any baking class whatsoever. So...if I can create something like this from scratch, all of you out there with dreams of making and selling beautiful cakes from your own home kitchen, can do so too. Go ahead and chase your dream!

Hi Corinne,Wow you outdid yourself once more, and a first timer at that!! I do like how you decorate your cakes, very simple yet elegant and so smooth, specially your gum paste topper. I have been baking on and off for quite a while, and I've been wanting to try making gum paste/fondant decorations but always procrastinating. With you as my inspiration, I really have to start now. Having the graduation cap topper as a starter.Thanks Corinne!!

hi corinne, just a question about tiered cakes. when you're about to cut the cake how do you serve it with the dowels and everything? when stacking a 2 tiered cake frosted with buttercream, wouldn't the top of the bottom tier get ruined when putting the next tier.thank you very much, I really need your help on this.....

I am definitely not the right person to ask for advice on this matter as I do not normally do tiered cakes but for whatever its worth, here's what I think:

When you put dowels in, the height of the dowels should be a tiny, tiny bit higher than the bottom cake. This way, the cake board of the top tier doesn't actually rest on the bottom cake BUT on the dowels. Don't worry too much about ruining the bottom tier. When you slice the cake, this won't matter anyway.

Before slicing a tiered cake, you must first carefully separate the tiers and also remove the dowels.